


Because

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock - Fandom
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Post-Final Problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-18 00:16:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9353213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: An aftermath story from Molly's POV, about all sorts of love.





	

It had _al_ _read_ _y_  been a bad weekend. 

There were good times and bad times--and sometimes there were times so black and miserable you hardly dared name them, and she'd already reached that point. Staring out her kitchen window, waiting for the tea kettle to boil because it wasn't booze and wasn't tears and wasn't any of the painful things she could have been doing that were bad for her, and then the phone rang. And she knew--she  _knew_ \--she shouldn't answer. Only she did, and from there on in it was pure, unadulterated hell, with nothing to hold her together except that for once there was none of the smart-arse in Sherlock's voice, only a desperate intensity that just made it worse. 

After, she threw the teacup across the room.

After, she poured herself a tumbler of the good scotch she seldom allowed herself...going out to the pub for a pint, instead, because it kept her from drinking a bit more than she should alone. The scotch she'd avoided ever since Sherlock had suggested she might know just a bit too much about pacing your drinking...and had been right. Not that he said so--too personal from his point of view, where the observation itself had not seemed personal to him at all, because, d'oh, it was  _observation._ What could be private about a truth anyone could deduce by her little tells--as ridiculous as thinking walking around wearing a sandwich board was a way to keep a secret. 

She shouldn't have demanded he say it first. That certainty haunted her all the rest of the weekend. Her one act of defiance, her one attempt to make the bleeding at least turn into something they had to share, her one attempt to defend herself, and it had only made it all the more horrible, because of what they both knew.

He said it, and she heard it--heard it the first time. Heard it the second. Knew what she'd never really wanted to know: that he loved her. Loved her as deeply and completely and utterly as she loved him--but the wrong way. She wanted romance. He could only give her a clumsy, hesitant, dumbfounded brotherly adoration, even more stripped of romance than the adoration he clearly felt for Mary Watson. If Molly died, he'd mourn her as certainly as he mourned Mary Watson. They were the sudden, surprising sisters in his life...he loved her.

_He loved her._

Absolutely. Completely. Forever.

And, loving her, he ensured he would never return the kind of love she had for him. It was there in his voice--that he knew. That he had not wanted to strip her of this last dignity. That he'd been silent because even he, stupid man, could see silence was kinder to her than confrontation. But there it was--she'd done it. Forced them to bring it out in daylight, where once seen it could never be forgotten.

And he would have heard all the same understanding in her voice...and hung up on her.

Three scotches in she made herself sit down in the bathtub, for fear of falling, and washed away the tears and the sweaty funk of misery, and taken herself to bed.

The next day she'd gone to the morgue to work, among the silence of the dead. She chased Barton and Jiang away, telling them both to take the day off, and had then sunk into the quiet, painless place in which there was no Molly, only something known as "pathologist." There were livers to weigh, and stomachs to empty and stomach samples to be obtained, stored, labeled, and sent to the lab. Chests to crack open. Questions to ask and answer. Nothing...personal.

Nothing that hurt.

She was good as "pathologist." She was fine--as a ritual figure in the Court of Death.

So she didn't notice them at first--the pair standing behind the glass window, watching, as she had so often watched Sherlock, with his crop, with his knives, with his rocks and bricks and cricket bats, all the ways of studying the effect of weapons on flesh... Studying what happened when people hurt each other. Killed each other.

When she did see them, her stomach rose up in rebellion. 

Mycroft Holmes, with Greg Lestrade at his shoulder, hovering. So much was wrong with that she could not begin to tally up the various regrets she felt, but, then, she was too overwhelmed by the absolute certainty that this was about Sherlock's call, and that she would have to face not Sherlock, but Mycroft. Sherlock couldn't even gin up the courage to face her himself.

She turned away, scowling, but they knew now that she'd seen them.

"Miss Hooper?" Mycroft's voice sounded as tired, but determined.

She set her jaw and turned back. "I'm busy."

He nodded. "Understood. But there's something that must be said before I leave--and enough before my brother contacts you to give you time."

She tipped her chin up, determined not to give the older, colder brother the satisfaction of seeing her pain. Bad enough Sherlock had let him in on what he'd done to her. What they'd done to each other. "No need. For you. For Sherlock. I'm fine. Tell him to stay away. I'll be fine."

"But you are not fine yet." Now he mentioned it she could hear her own built-in denial of that first lie. She gave a sharp shrug.

"I'm fine," she said, more coldly. "I don't know what it was about. But I trust Sherlock. It was about something...important."

Mycroft nodded. "Yes. It was about saving your life. A game like those Moriarty once played was under way, and your life depended on him making you say...what you both said."

"So he told you?" She didn't know whether to be further hurt--or slightly honored. Sherlock seldom spoke to his brother for less than catastrophic need. Though she hated to be classified on those terms.

Mycroft looked away, face drawn. Over his shoulder she caught Greg's eyes--dark and worried, his face a cipher, but...was that a tiny head-shake, some silent "It's not what you think, Moll"? She waited. At last Mycroft turned back.

"No. He didn't tell me. I was there. John and I were both there, praying you'd say it, terrified you would not. I don't think I...we...any of us could have endured if we'd had to see you blown up. There was enough blood already." 

She could not fail to believe him. There was pain pouring off him--pain like you never had to face with corpses. Only the living hurt like that. She drew a deep breath, processing the truth. 

"Sherlock wasn't toying with you--though I can't assure you a more criminal mind was not. I promise you, Miss Hooper. If Sherlock comes to explain what little he can...no, when he comes to explain, I need you to let him in. Let him talk. Believe him. He can't tell you the whole truth--or, if he does, he'll be breaking the Government Secrets act and his own oath to keep this matter from the public. But it was real, and he acted because..."

"Because he loves me." Her voice managed to falter part-way through, with the evil little hitch and hint of tears and anger that telegraphed that she wasn't the pathologist anymore, but Molly, who died over that phone call--who had come to stay here, peaceful, among her fellow dead. 

No, she thought. You're lying to yourself again. Only the living hurt like this. 

"I would have let him in anyway," she said. "I would have listened."

"But it's so much easier to trust when someone else offers you the...context. Such as it is."

She thought about it. Yes. It would be easier to listen to Sherlock's apology now. She'd have more conviction he had never wanted to hurt her--but to save her, his beloved sister. Still--

"It changes nothing." She made a sour face. "It was...what it was. Sometimes you can have too much honesty. It's hard to live beyond all hope, Mr. Holmes. Harder to have your hope stripped away in front of the one person you'd rather had not witnessed that."

He nodded. "I understand. If it helps--the criminal who set the game in play, chose you as the target, almost certainly did so out of jealousy for what the two of you share. Was jealous that Sherlock has a sister he is able to love wholeheartedly, forever." He sighed, and looked at his toes, hands clinging to the handle of his umbrella. "Well. I suppose that's all. I've spared him the pain of trying to explain the basics of why he called you. He does care, Miss Hooper...and you were only forced through this because he cares so much you were the perfect forced sacrifice."

She nodded, but said nothing. Mycroft studied her for a few long seconds, eyes haunted, then moved away, saying, "Very well, DI Lestrade. I have done what little I could. Thank you for bringing me over, and if you could take me back now?"

"In a mo," Greg said. "You go along now. I'll be with you in no time."

The two men's eyes met, exchanging thoughts. Then Mycroft nodded and left, saying nothing more.

Greg turned back to Molly, looking down on her from that high, windowed observation deck. He said, softly, "He came because he cared, too--for both of you. He's telling the truth, Moll. It wasn't anything Sherlock wanted to do to you...and your life... They were trying to save you."

She ignored careful phrasing that suggested that the goal had been a red herring of some sort--that her life had never been in danger. That wasn't the point, and she could accept that. Instead she said, "I believe you, Greg. But it doesn't change things, does it? End of an era. It's ugly, isn't it, when all truth can offer is the death of hope? I don't know how to perform an autopsy on hope. I can't crack the chest of dreams and, and if I could, there's no life left in it."

Greg's eyes grieved for her. He was silent for far too long.

Then he said, "I don't believe it, Moll. It may not be what either of you wish. But I can't believe that two people who love each other as much as you and Sherlock can't make something of it, even if it's mismatched and out of sync. Love matters...and it abides."

She realized, suddenly, what else had hurt, looking at the two men. "You're together, aren't you? Him and you. He and you? I mean, both of you--together. Somehow..." her words petered out as she realized she knew they were together, but found she didn't understand how.

He nodded. "More or less. Long story short, whatever we are it's an 'us' sometimes, and right now he needs us more than he needs anything but Sherlock alive and breathing. Beyond that even I can't say, 'cause I don't know." He grinned suddenly. "Hell. We may have to invent a name for it."

"But you love each other." She said it with certainty.

"Well. I love him. Somehow."

"You love him completely--however." Suddenly she laughed, and it was like the dawn broke, and the storm passed, and the angels sang, and the Apocalypse was canceled until some unspecified distant time. In moments Greg joined her.

And then that, too, passed. He smiled. "You'll be all right, Moll?"

"Yeah. I'll be all right. You're right. He loves me, and I love him, and so what if it's not what I dreamed of? It's real--and that's better."

"Yeah. It is. Even if you end up having to invent a name for it. Look--gotta go. Mycroft took it in the heart as bad as Sherlock did. Someone has to stick with him. Take care."

"I will."

And he was gone.

She stood in the room with its carefully focused lighting, realizing that she still held a scalpel, still wore her lab coat, still had her goggles hanging from their strap on her chest...and that she still had four hours to work before the shift ended. She looked around at the waiting dead.

For a brief, bitter second she envied them--they couldn't hurt any more. But then she let it go, and celebrated her own life, because only the living could change hurt into hope, and endings into new beginnings. Today she was not happy--but now she was sure that somehow, someday, she would be. And in the meantime she had work, and friends, and a man who loved her like the sister he'd never had.


End file.
